Green Lanterns #1 Review and *SPOILERS*

Wolverines!...... I Mean, Red Lanterns!

Written By: Sam Humphries
Art By: Robson Rocha, Jay Leisten, Blond, Dave Sharpe
Cover Price: $2.99
Release Date: June 15, 2016

*Non Spoilers and Score At The Bottom*

It's so weird looking at this book since we just saw the Rebirth issue two weeks ago and I know that it's been said over and over again that these titles will be coming at us every two weeks...... but I guess in my mind it was one thing to say it and it's another actually seeing it.  Here we are though, Green Lanterns....... and I'm pretty goddamn excited.  Yeah, I had an issue with some of the bickering between Simon and Jessica....... and how Charles Soule's run of Red Lanterns seems to be forgotten here, but overall, I can't wait to see these two rookie Lanterns get to show their stuff now that they're left alone to their own devices.  Sink or Swim, but I have complete faith that these heroes will swim their way into everyone's hearts....... because hearts are full of blood and you'd need to swim to get to it.......... I don't know what I'm saying anymore.  Let's jump into this issue and see how our Lanterns are faring and what Atrocitus' plan is for the Earth.  Let's check it out.

Explain It!:

Our issue begins with our Green Lantern partners showing up to a farmhouse because their rings have alerted them to an unauthorized alien on Earth and right from the get go I'm pretty happy with the way things are playing out here because while our Lanterns still have a bit of bickering going on, it's done really well since we have duel captions going on giving us insight to what each of our Lanterns are thinking in response to certain comments and to the overall situation in general.  I really dug this as a way to show the posturing of Simon at certain times and just Jessica trying to come off more than she feels she is within. It's done really well and because of this I don't really mind the bickering right off the bat and the bickering seems to be replaced by both of our characters realizing that they're both in over their heads.  So anyway, our heroes go off to find this unauthorized alien and what they find instead is a meth addict.......... who possibly is an alien?..... I don't know, they say that this character is just a meth head and while I don't have a lot of experiences with meth or people who are into meth, there was a lot wrong with this guy's face that I would like to think doesn't happen in real life........ who knows though?...... Meth + Rage = Ugly!  So our Lanterns show up and take on this meth head toting a big ass maybe alien gun and eventually they take him out....... that's where the weirdness of this issue starts.

It seems that this meth head is the linchpin to some Red Lanterns plot that involves a shit ton of sacrifices and something called a "Hell Tower".  I don't know if Hell Towers were something that we've seen before, but they're certainly new to me and this one is activated after Simon and Jessica call the cops to the scene and the families of missing people turn up to see if their loved ones happen to be apart of this basement full of bodies........ which with the rage that they're feeling, that is actually manifesting like we saw with the rage virus at the end of the Red Lanterns series, the Hell Tower is activated and..... it's a gigantic bloody tower that seems to take out everything for miles and miles around it.  Luckily, our rookie Lanterns were quick with their protective domes.  While this certainly surprises our Lanterns, it's even more surprising to me that before our heroes could even investigate what was going on, they were shut down by ARGUS, who tells them that if they don't take a hike, they'll be facing the entire force of the Federal Government........ which is kind of scary for anyone, especially heroes who are unsure of themselves, so our heroes do as their told, whether they want to or not.

 

In the end, we find out that the Red Lanterns are slowly dying because their connection to rage is dwindling and apparently the fact that this Hell Tower on Earth was born prematurely isn't helping the fact....... which leads me to think that it's some sort of rage cell tower, but we're not given a lot of information about what's going on except that Atrocitus needs something called a Rage Seed and that Red Dawn is coming......... and that he blames Bleez for screwing the pooch on the whole Hell Tower thing since the Green Lanterns now know about it.  Shit continues to get weird on Earth though when we see people going all rage crazy while Jessica is out shopping with her sister and Simon out of nowhere gets something called "Emerald Sight" that allows him to get premonitions now that things are apparently getting hairy in the Universe.  So yeah, rage all over and Simon is getting strange visions of the future...... it's all very odd, but apparently this is exactly what Atrocitus was waiting for because with his own visions he's seeing that one of our Lanterns will serve him and the other will die....... or fall....... which could be something other than dying I guess.  

That's it for this first issue of Green Lanterns and while I enjoyed the interactions between Simon and Jessica a lot more in this issue than Rebirth, the story got a little crazy on me out of nowhere I felt.  I mean, we're just jumping in head first into Red Dawn and as unprepared as I felt with it, I have to wonder how our heroes will deal because a lot is being thrown at us from Hell Towers, Rage Seeds, Emerald Sight and everyone going all rage happy out of nowhere.  I'm still intrigued, don't get me wrong, but even though I'm not someone who likes having their hand held throughout a story, I think I would have appreciated a little hand holding here because with this first issue I just felt lost in a shopping center yelling for my Mama.  I'm sure that everything will be explained as we go along, it was just a little too much too soon for me, but even with that I have more faith in that our main characters will be able to work together and I like that and I like the dual captions that tell both sides of what our heroes are thinking as everything is going on......... Plus I liked that Simon Baz' gun was spotlighted for a panel even though it doesn't really have much meaning here.  It's just something that I think of when I think of the character and I missed its inclusion in the Rebirth issue because it shows us that Simon isn't a character that trusts the ring the way other Lanterns would.  I loved the art in this book and the colors looked fantastic and I hope that the series is able to maintain the look that it gave us here.

Bits and Pieces:

While I do think that a lot of things were thrown at us a little bit too soon with this issue because of how much I was wondering what the hell everything meant, I did have fun reading it and loved how well our Lantern heroes are working together now that the bickering is low key and how we got to see what was going on with our heroes through duel captions that gave us a little more insight.  The art and colors were fantastic and I can't wait to see how some of the stuff in this issue is explained because while I can't say that I understand everything right now, I can tell you that it's got me intrigued.  

7/10